Chapter 32: Demon queen order

He pulled the blade out of the carcass and searched the monster’s upper torso with his left hand. Since the demon had human-like intelligence, he hoped it carried something useful.

After a moment of searching, his fingers brushed against a hard object inside the monster’s leather vest. He pulled it out.

It was a round black stone token. The surface was carved with a strange, glowing purple insignia that looked like a crescent moon surrounded by thorns. The moment Dante touched the token, a strange sensation washed over him. The token radiated a faint trace of spatial energy.

"This isn’t a normal item," Dante thought.

He didn’t have his system appraisal skill to check the item’s statistics, but he could guess its function based on his past life experience as a veteran ranker. This token was likely a gate pass—a key used by the demon clan to bypass the defensive barriers surrounding their territory.

Dante pocketed the token. He looked deeper into the dark tunnel. The path didn’t end here; it kept going down, slanting deep into the underground grid of the floor.

Suddenly, a loud roar come from the tunnel walls from deep below. It wasn’t just one monster. It sounded like hundreds of beasts marching in perfect synchronization.

Dante’s eyes narrowed. "The vanguard forces it mentioned. They are already on their way up."

Instead of retreating back to the surface where the acid rain was still pouring, Dante tightened his grip on his burning sword. A dark smirk appeared on his face.

"Perfect. If there are more of them, I can just use their cores to force a manual override on my system."

Without a single drop of fear, Dante walked straight into the darkness, heading deeper into the demon territory.

Dante walked down the dark, slanting tunnel. The stone floor beneath him vibrated constantly, and the sound of marching grew louder with every step.

He didn’t slow down.

"I need to kill the leader of this group and take its core," Dante thought, his eyes narrowing in the dark. "If I don’t vent this energy into a high-grade crystal soon, the blade will snap."

A few moments later, the narrow path ended, opening up into a massive underground cavern.

Dante stepped onto a high stone ledge and looked down. The scene below was absolute chaos. The massive chamber was illuminated by glowing purple crystals, showing an army of at least three hundred heavily armored demons. They carried massive battle-axes and moved in tight, military rows.

At the front of the army stood a four-armed elite demon commander. He was over four meters tall, covered in black scales, and held two giant iron clubs in his lower hands.

"Move faster, you useless trash!" the commander roared, his voice shaking the walls. "The surface guards are dead! Something powerful is coming down from the pit! We will crush it and offer its blood to the Great Queen!"

Dante didn’t say a word. He stepped off the edge of the twelve-meter ledge and dropped straight down.

BOOM!

Dante landed in the dead center of the marching line, shattering the stone floor beneath his boots. A massive wave of dust shot outward, knocking the nearest demon soldiers off balance.

The entire army stopped. Three hundred pairs of glowing white eyes locked onto the dust cloud.

As the smoke cleared, Dante slowly stood up, keeping his left hand casually inside his pocket while his right hand held his invisible sword.

The four-armed commander blinked in surprise, his face instantly twisting into pure rage. "A human? A single human gutter rat killed our surface vanguards?!"

"Die, human!" a demon soldier screamed, lunging forward with a massive iron axe.

Four other soldiers joined him, swinging their weapons toward Dante’s head from all sides with ruthless, bloodthirsty speed. They wanted to turn him into mincemeat instantly.

Dante didn’t try to dodge. He stood perfectly still.

CLANG!

A crash echoed through the cavern. The five heavy axes struck Dante’s neck and chest at the exact same time. But the weapon didn’t cut his skin. They didn’t even push him back an inch.

Instead, a violent shockwave exploded from Dante’s body. The SSS-rank Vajra Mirror Body initialized instantly, doubling the force of the attacks and blasting it straight back into the attackers.

CRACK!

The iron axes shattered into tiny fragments. The brutal feedback wave traveled up their arms, snapping their bones instantly before slamming into their chests. The five demons spat dark green blood as their breastplates caved inward, their bodies flying backward across the floor.

The rest of the army gasped, stepping back in pure terror.

"What kind of monstrous power is this?!"

"He didn’t even use a mana shield! Our weapons just blew up!"

Dante didn’t give them time to recover. He took a step forward and swung his right hand in a brutal horizontal arc.

SLASH!

Even though the sword was invisible, the momentum cut a clean path through the crowd. Ten armored demons were sliced completely in half at the waist. Blood sprayed everywhere. The souls of the dead monsters rushed into the blade, making it twice as heavy. Dante’s arm stiffened from the intense weight, but his expression remained completely emotionless.

"Monster!" the four-armed commander roared, his eyes bloodshot with fury. He raised his giant iron clubs, his muscles bulging as he prepared to lunge. "I’ll crush your skull myself!"

The suspense in the room reached a boiling point. Dante tightened his grip, planning to use Void Step to pierce the commander’s chest crystal and force a manual override on his locked stats.

But just as the commander took his first step—

"Stop."

A cold and incredibly dominant female voice suddenly came directly inside the minds of every single demon in the cavern.

The voice wasn’t loud, but the sheer power behind it was terrifying. It felt like an invisible mountain had dropped onto the room. The three hundred demon soldiers instantly dropped to their knees, their armored knees crashing against the ground as they trembled in pure survival terror.